RICHARD LONG

@factpostnews @CNviolations here's another one!

"The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" will air its final episode tonight. CBS canceled Colbert's show at the request of the Trump administration.

@Wulf__Sorenson Let's not forget this guy won 49 states in 1984. Polarization happened slowly since then as competing interests vied for the votes

How is it that American politics are divided almost perfectly 50/50? A country of 330+ million, and it just so happens that almost exactly half of the people support red, and the other half support blue? Seems suspicious to me

@KatieMiller I wouldn't trade fatherhood for anything, it's hard but such a blessing!

I feel sad for the people who will miss out on having children because of anti-family propaganda pushed by the left. Humanity will collapse without increasing birth rates.

An actor who played a character so perfectly that nobody else could ever top it. GIFS ONLY.

@RoKhanna @CNviolations here's another one

South Carolina, where the first shot of the civil war was fired, where 40 percent of those enslaved came through the Charleston port, is today engaged in an ugly recidivism to draw maps that will deny a Black person the chance to serve in Congress. The stakes could not be higher. Our political fight is not on a playground, but a moral battleground. We must stand for Black representation across the South.

@uscfan981 They produce great corn and offensive linemen

Say something nice about Iowa.

@SleeperBrowns Well played!

Pretty crazy the Bengals are spending $276 million on Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins and the Browns went out and basically grabbed the same guys in the draft last month #DawgPound

@Dan_Hoard @gameonjmoney Love these camp updates! Football is coming soon!

Five observations from the #Bengals rookie minicamp: 1. WR Colbie Young is 6’4 with a huge catch radius and 4.49 speed. Former Georgia teammate Dylan Fairchild calls him a 4th round steal. “I was super fired-up,” said Fairchild. “I went home and told my wife, ‘We got Colbie!’ If you would’ve told me a year ago that he went where he went, I would’ve been shocked. He’s super- talented and a great dude.”

@horrormuseum What did I just watch?

We absolutely would watch this!

@RevivedThoughts Melchizadek

Do you have a favorite weird Bible name? My go to is Tigleth Pileser!

@Pixie1z Isa

Can you make a suggestion?

@conquertheno Reacher

Who are you calling to rescue you?

Age yourself with a piece of outdated tech from your youth! I'll go first: VCRs📼

@Brink_Thinker Yes we did

Be Honest.. Did parents really just let their kids wander the neighborhood all day with no phone and just say... be back before dark?

@Empress_Brymex B=10. A=5. B/A=10/5=2

@JakeRammos Granite

Gun to your head, name a rock.

@FootballLearn1 @BigWillie7179 obviously!

Which offensive lineman do you believe belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame who hasn't currently been inducted? 🏈

@JoshuaBarzon 4

Which logo design is your favorite from these 4 options that I designed? I am working on a logo + brand identity for a church that wants the main logo mark to have a prominent central cross with a traditional yet modern vibe. Thanks in advance for your vote!

Standing in line waiting to eat for the last time at Old Spaghetti Factory in Cincinnati. Why are you closing, there's obviously a loyal following here? @OldSpaghFactory

@BskiMike22802 This is the best thing I've read on the internet in weeks! I love all of these proposals

TIME FOR A NEW MAP: REORGANIZING AMERICA FOR THE 21ST CENTURY Ever wonder why Rhode Island could fit inside Montana 218 times? Or why you could lose eight small Eastern states inside Montana and still have room for a Costco parking lot? This was not random geographic incompetence—it was pure horse-and-wagon math. The Founders understood representation required actual participation. A farmer needed to travel to the state capital, yell at some politicians, and get home before his crops died. In the 1780s, that meant maybe three days by horse. State sizes reflected the maximum distance someone could travel without their family forgetting what they looked like. And here is the kicker—even with three-day horse trips and counting ballots by hand with candles, they STILL got election results faster than Philadelphia County, Wayne County (Detroit), or Maricopa County. Funny how that works. Then we expanded westward. Montana is 559 miles wide—weeks of travel by horse, assuming you survived the bears and dysentery. But by then we had railroads and telegraphs, so we shrugged and said "close enough" while drawing state lines the size of European countries. Fast forward to 2026. We have the internet, highways, and air travel. The technological limitations that determined state boundaries are as relevant as the Pony Express. But nobody adjusted boundaries to reflect the REAL divide in modern America: city people versus everybody else. Urban centers control state governments through sheer numbers while rural regions get outvoted, ignored, and then lectured about "democracy" by people who think food grows at Whole Foods. Except we are not a democracy—we are a constitutional republic where minority rights matter and local communities get actual governance, not whatever San Francisco decides sounds progressive this week. What would rational reorganization look like? Buckle up. GREATER IDAHO absorbs Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington (everything east of the Cascades). Population: 3.2 million people who are done with Seattle and Portland's nonsense. Counties in Eastern Oregon have been VOTING to join Idaho since 2020. Not tweeting about it. Not posting angry Facebook rants. Actually voting. Why? Because watching Portland regulate your water usage from a coffee shop is torture when you actually understand what a drought is. Or imagine being a rancher dealing with environmental laws written by people who think cattle are four-legged climate terrorists rather than understanding how rangeland management actually works. The Cascade Range creates a perfect natural boundary—and a cultural wall so thick you could see it from space. East of the Cascades: agriculture, mining, forestry, people who work with their hands. West of the Cascades: tech campuses, environmental activism, people who genuinely believe food appears at Whole Foods through some magical urban process. These communities share identical values with Idaho and absolutely nothing with cities where ordering groceries on an app counts as "knowing where your food comes from." CALIFORNIA gets a THREE-WAY DIVORCE: Coastal California, State of Jefferson, and Central California. Coastal California keeps the metros: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego. Your tech billionaires who solved homelessness by making apps about it. Your entertainment industry. Your progressives. Population: 22 million people who think "farmland" is a Stardew Valley reference. State of Jefferson FINALLY happens after 83 years of politely asking. In 1941, these Northern California and Southern Oregon counties literally set up roadblocks and handed out independence declarations before Pearl Harbor rudely interrupted. They are still waiting. That is 83 years—longer than it took to plan the California high-speed rail that still does not exist, so at least they are consistent with timelines. Timber workers watch mills shut down while Sacramento lectures about sustainability from buildings with AC set to 68. Miners watch their jobs regulated away by people whose deepest hole experience is a Starbucks reserve. Population: 1.2 million extremely patient people who are DONE waiting. Central California takes the agricultural heartland—the entire Central Valley. Population: 12 million. Imagine farming in Fresno County. You work land that feeds the nation. Los Angeles and San Francisco outvote you every single election. Sacramento regulates your water to save fish while your orchards die. They mandate electric tractors when diesel is what actually works in the real world where physics exists. You pay the nation's highest taxes while your rural roads look like Afghanistan. And you are told to accept it because "democracy." So much for one person, one vote when two cities decide your fate before you finish counting ballots. The math is glorious: Instead of California giving Democrats two automatic Senate seats, this split creates four to six Republican senators from the same geography. That is not gerrymandering—that is ENDING the gerrymandering where people who think food magically appears at Whole Foods get to outvote the people who actually GROW THE FOOD. ILLINOIS splits into ILLINOIS (Chicago) and LINCOLN (the 96 counties Chicago forgot exist). Population: 8.9 million versus 3.9 million. Living downstate? Cook County ALONE has more people than your entire 96 counties combined. Chicago decides every election before you vote. You watch state money pour into transit projects while your roads qualify for disaster relief. You watch gun laws passed because Chicago cannot stop shooting itself while your rural county's biggest crime is teenagers tipping cows. Your property taxes fund Chicago pensions for the same machine politics that sends governors to prison like it is a career progression path—seriously, Illinois has a "former governors in federal prison" wing that could hold a reunion. Chicago votes, you pay. That is the entire system. Your vote counts exactly as much as thoughts and prayers—technically present, functionally irrelevant. COLORADO splits into COLORADO (Front Range) and WESTERN COLORADO (everything west of the Continental Divide). Population: 4.8 million versus 950,000. Running a ranch on the Western Slope? Denver decides every election before your polls close. You extract natural gas that powers their Tesla charging stations while they pass laws making your job illegal. You manage water carefully while they build suburbs requiring millions of gallons. Aspen billionaires lecture you about climate change between private jet flights. You have zero say because Denver outvotes you before you finish your morning coffee. The Western Slope has more in common with Wyoming than with Boulder, where "hard work" means a difficult yoga pose. NEW AMSTERDAM forms from Upstate New York—everything north of Westchester and Rockland counties. Population: 11.8 million upstate versus 8.2 million downstate. Dairy farmers in the Adirondacks follow regulations designed for Manhattan apartments where people think milk comes from cartons and cows are mythical creatures possibly related to unicorns. Buffalo's economy gets controlled by Brooklyn legislators whose only upstate experience is seeing it from the Thruway. That is not representative government—that is taxation without representation with extra paperwork. NEW ENGLAND consolidates New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut into one state. Combined population: 12 million. Total area: 33,000 square miles—still smaller than Maine or South Carolina. They already share infrastructure, utility grids, education systems, and virtually identical progressive policies. One governor, one legislature, one court system. Maintaining four separate bureaucracies for one metropolitan region wastes taxpayer money on duplicated administrative overhead. CANADIAN PROVINCES join as new states: ALBERTA (4.7 million), BRITISH COLUMBIA (5.5 million), SASKATCHEWAN (1.2 million), MANITOBA (1.4 million). Combined: 12.8 million new Americans. These provinces are desperate to escape Ottawa's regulatory stranglehold and carbon taxes that make California look business-friendly. Alberta's energy sector alone makes North America completely energy independent overnight—no more begging OPEC for anything, no more strategic reserves, just energy independence while the rest of the world figures out that windmills do not work when it is not windy. Saskatchewan and Manitoba bring agricultural economies that would flourish without Ottawa's bureaucratic nonsense. British Columbia adds Pacific ports that strengthen our position against China. These provinces share more values with neighboring American states than with Toronto's progressive politics that treat them like colonial resource extraction zones—which is ironic considering Canada lectures everyone else about colonialism. REPEALING THE 17TH AMENDMENT - RESTORING CONSTITUTIONAL FEDERALISM Here is the critical constitutional fix that almost everyone ignores: REPEAL THE 17TH AMENDMENT and return Senate elections to state legislatures where they belong. The 17th Amendment ratified in 1913 fundamentally broke our constitutional system. It changed Senate elections from state legislature appointments to direct popular elections. The Founders designed the Senate to represent STATE GOVERNMENTS in federal negotiations, not to function as a second House of Representatives elected by popular vote. When state legislatures controlled Senate appointments, Senators actually defended state sovereignty against federal overreach. What do we have now? Senators who campaign exactly like House members, pandering to special interest campaign donors while completely ignoring state government interests. Repealing the 17th Amendment would accomplish several critical objectives: It would RESTORE actual federalism by giving state governments direct representation in Washington. Senators would answer to state legislatures instead of national campaign donors and media narratives. It would END the corrupting influence of national campaign donors over Senate races. Multi-million dollar Senate campaigns funded by out-of-state interests would become irrelevant when state legislators make the appointments. It would FORCE Senators to defend their state's interests instead of chasing national media coverage and presidential ambitions. State legislators can recall Senators who ignore state interests—something voters cannot effectively do under the current system. It would RETURN the Senate to its constitutional role as defender of state sovereignty against federal encroachment. The Senate was never meant to be a nationally-elected body responding to national political trends. It would CREATE genuine accountability. State legislators who appoint poor Senators face immediate consequences in their own re-election campaigns. Voters can hold their state representatives accountable for Senate appointments far more effectively than they can influence statewide Senate races dominated by expensive media campaigns. The 17th Amendment was a PROGRESSIVE ERA DISASTER that centralized power in Washington and destroyed the constitutional balance between federal authority and state sovereignty. Time to reverse that mistake. Communities get governed by people who actually understand their needs instead of urban centers imposing solutions that sound amazing in TED talks but destroy actual communities. Revolutionary concept, I know. Rural Americans finally get representation instead of being permanently outvoted by people who think "rural economy" is a craft beer brand. One person, one vote should mean your vote MATTERS, not that you get mathematically erased by cities that outvote you before lunch. Smaller governments return power to the people as the Tenth Amendment intended. Combined with repealing the 17th Amendment, we restore what the Founders designed instead of the centralized mess progressives created where Washington decides everything and state governments become administrative districts with flags. Urban centers stop extracting wealth from rural regions while lecturing them about privilege. Chicago bleeding downstate Illinois, Denver controlling the Western Slope, coastal California dominating the Central Valley—this ends the exploitation. The current map was drawn when Chicago had 350 people and Illinois made sense as one state. Now Chicago controls 3.9 million downstaters who share nothing with it except geographic bad luck. Our boundaries should reflect 2026, not 1818 when the fastest communication was a guy on a horse who might get eaten by wolves—and still somehow got messages delivered faster than the US Postal Service manages today. The Founders understood government works best closest to the people. We abandoned that. Time to fix it. But what do I know? I am just someone who believes people deserve governance by representatives who understand their lives instead of distant bureaucrats imposing solutions that sound progressive in coastal coffee shops but destroy communities while lecturing them about tolerance.